Finding a home

1. Pay the reservation fee and enter into the lease

You can find apartments available in our webshop by using the advanced search and the filter Available to rent through the webshop.

When you find a home you like, you can enter into a lease agreement either on your own or together with another person. Once the parties have accepted the agreement and its general terms in the webshop and paid the reservation fee of 300 euros via their online bank.

2. Visit your new home

You can visit your new home after entering into the lease agreement if you wish. We aim to arrange the apartment showing at your preferred time within three working days. You can share your preferred time during the rental process. We will confirm the exact date and time of the viewing by email, and you will also receive a reminder via text message.

Satisfaction guarantee: You can cancel your agreement during the if the home doesn’t meet your expectations. If you cancel your agreement, we’ll refund the reservation fee in full to your bank account as soon as possible, usually the next working day. No additional fees will be charged for the refund.

Please note! If you choose not to visit the apartment in person, you give up the satisfaction guarantee and your right to cancel the agreement. In this case, you can only terminate the lease by following the notice period and terms of the agreement.

3. Pick up the keys and move in

You can pick up the keys to your new home on the first day your lease agreement is valid. If that day falls on a weekend or public holiday, you will get the keys on the following working day.

When you apply for a SATOhome, your application remains valid until all the homes you have added to it are rented. In other words: You can keep your application active by adding new homes to it if the previous ones have for some reason not been of interest to you or if they have been rented to another home seeker.

If you used strong identification when first submitting your application, you can update it by clicking the button below and identifying yourself with online banking codes or mobile ID.

By using the search alert you make sure that an interesting apartment won't slip by you. You can create one or more alerts and easily share it with a friend.

SATO's search alert is especially useful if you don't find a suitable home from the currently available apartments. You can add multiple filters to the search alert such as the city, district, apartment size, or maximum rent.

When it finds a suitable rental apartment, it will notify you by sending an email. You can also find the search alert at OmaSATO. If you don't need the search alert anymore, you can cancel it via a link found in any of the search alert emails you've received.

The time you spend in finding the perfect rental apartment depends on many things. In popular areas and houses the apartment turnover is much slower and there are a lot of applicants.

The size of the home you are searching for also affects the period of time. Homes with more than three bedrooms are the least common in SATO's stock and not every house necessarily has apartments this large. On the other hand, the demand for small apartments is the highest and therefore you may have to search for a small apartment with a lower rent for a long time. Because a large amount of SATO rented homes are spacious 1-bedroom apartments of around 60 sq m in floor area, they are the easiest to rent.

Please note that your apartment application remains valid until all the homes you have added to it are rented.

The quickest way to find a new home is to rent it directly from our webshop. In the webshop, you can choose a home that suits you and rent it immediately by paying the reservation fee.

Once you have submitted your application and it checks out, we will contact you automatically. In some cases we need to check the application out manually, and it may take a bit more time for us to contact you.

We allow several applicants to view a home at the same time. At times there are so many applicants for one apartment that we can only provide a viewing for some of them. Because there are several customers viewing the apartment at the same time, it is possible that we may not be able to offer it to you. In that case, we will let you know how to renew your application.

Some SATO rental homes are state-subsidised, which means assets of the person (or family or other people moving in) selected as a resident must meet the requirements set by the state. These apartments are marked with the ARA and/or 'Asset limitations'.

The selection of tenants for these apartments is based on a needs assessment in which assets as well as housing needs and income level are used as criteria.

If you are applying for this type of accommodation, you will be asked separately to attach documents to your application during the application process.

Most of SATO RentHomes are non-subsidised. They do not feature any state-issued restrictions, which means SATO is free to offer these homes to any of its customers.

Some SATO rental homes are state-subsidised, which means assets of the person or family selected as a resident must meet the requirements set by the state. These apartments are marked with 'Asset limitations'. The selection of tenants for these apartments is based on a needs assessment in which assets as well as housing needs and income level of the applicant(s) are used as criteria. When applying for apartments marked with 'Asset limitations', make sure you also fill in the sections on housing needs, assets and income. Please note that if someone under 18 in the household is working, their income will be considered in the selection, unless they work only during school holidays.

Most SATO homes do not involve any criteria relating to assets or housing needs, because they are non-subsidised rental apartments.

Starting from 1 January 2025, maximum income limits will be introduced for the tenant selection process of state-subsidised rental apartments. These limits will apply to both new residents and those changing apartments.

Asset limits

Please note! Always check the municipality's website for up-to-date information.

At times the thought of living alone may not feel right for financial reasons or because you would prefer to have some company. That is when it is a good idea to consider sharing a home.

SATO homes are available for sharing between two or more people, but the actual lease agreement is always only signed with a maximum of two tenants. In other words, if you rent a home from us with a group of friends, two of you will need to be the main tenants and the others will need to be subtenants of the main tenants. This means the main tenants will bear the primary responsibility and liability towards SATO about the apartment, while the subtenants will be responsible and liable towards the main tenants.

SATO currently has no new rental homes or buildings planned or under construction. When new developments are being planned again, we will announce it in our newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter below.

SATO owns around 550 rental homes for senior citizens. Senior apartments have been built with senior citizens' need in mind, and they have elevators. Most of the SATO homes for seniors are located in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.

Most of our rental apartments agreements are written to last at least one year. However, there might occasionally be homes with shorter leases on our Find a Home page, especially when they are going to go under major renovation in the future.

Objects preventing getting a rental apartment

Unfortunately you can’t get a SATO rental home if you don’t have a Finnish personal identity code. We must be able to identify and distinguish the parties to the lease agreement in case of any disputes.

Our policy is to check the payment history of every applicant from the database of the credit information company Suomen Asiakastieto Oy. Payment defaults may prevent you from being granted a SATO home, but a single minor default does not in every case result in anapplication being rejected. However, you cannot rent an apartment from our online store if you have entries in your credit history.

If you have paid all the bills that led to the credit defaults, we recommend you to ask Suomen Asiakastieto Oy to add a 'Ref mark' to your credit information.

If you want to discuss the effect of your possible payment defaults on your application, please fill in an application and after completing the application, contact our customer service. You can start applying by taking a look at our selection of homes and adding the ones you like the best to your application on our Find a Home page.

Yes indeed, many of our home buildings have commercial space also, as well as storage we can rent to your company. Since our homes are located in some of the best spots in the largest cities of Finland, so are our commercial spaces and storages. Be it in Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Turku, or Tampere, you can be sure our spaces are easily reached. We mainly have small to mid-sized brick-and-mortar spaces.